Article

new media & society

12(5) 763–778
Mobile social networks and © The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
urban public space co.uk/journalsPermission.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1461444809349578
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Lee Humphreys
Cornell University, USA

Abstract
The development and proliferation of mobile social networks have the potential to
transform ways that people come together and interact in public space. These services
allow new kinds of information to flow into public spaces and, as such, can rearrange
social and spatial practices. Dodgeball is used as a case study of mobile social networks.
Based on a year-long qualitative field study, this article explores how Dodgeball was used
to facilitate social congregation in public spaces and begins to expand our understanding
of traditional notions of space and social interaction. Drawing on the concept of parochial
space, this article examines how ideas of mobile communication and public space are
negotiated in the everyday practice and use of mobile social networks.

Key words
mobile phones, mobile social networks, parochial space, public space, social interaction

It would be easy to believe that communication technology has always allowed people to
overcome barriers of time and space. People have used the telegraph, telephone, television,
computers and the internet to share information and interact across temporal and geographi-
cal boundaries. In some cases communication technologies have even encouraged the shift
and acceleration of information flows. With the rise of electronic and networked technology,
scholars have suggested that social interaction has become increasingly disembedded from
the particulars of time and space (Giddens, 1991; Meyrowitz, 1985). People can use the inter-
net and mobile technology to connect with friends and family from all over the world.
While telecommunications allow people to connect with those far away, it would be an
oversimplification to suggest that these technologies make local connections and relations
unimportant. In fact, there is a growing movement to help people use telecommunications
to connect with other locals. Services such as CraigsList.com, MeetUp.com and Plazes.
com harness the power of the internet to facilitate connections between people based on

Corresponding author:
Lee Humphreys, Department of Communication, Cornell University, 305 Kennedy Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Email: lmh13@cornell.edu
764 new media & society 12(5)

geographic proximity. More recently, services that connect local people have moved
beyond the internet to the mobile or cell phone. The accessibility and mobility of this
device suggest that people can use these services to connect with local people in real time
as they move through cities.
People increasingly use mobile social networks to transform the ways they come
together and interact in public space. Almost 50 million people worldwide engage in
mobile social networking (Shannon, 2008). These services allow members to access net-
works of friends or potential friends through their mobile phones. Much like social net-
work sites on the internet (boyd and Ellison, 2007; Ellison et al., 2007), new mobile social
networks can be used to build and reinforce social ties (Humphreys, 2007). These mobile
social networks can facilitate the flow of new kinds of information into public spaces and
as such can rearrange social and spatial practices. This article begins to explore how these
new mobile services can be used to facilitate social interaction in public spaces. I discuss
the nature of the interactions that occur when using mobile social networks and examine
how people connect via mobile phones with other people in their city.
The article begins by discussing the literature related to urban public spaces and
social interaction. By addressing the historical role of telecommunications in the city,
I attempt to contextualize the use of mobile social networks not as entirely radical and
new, but as a next step in the intricate interdependency between communication tech-
nology and urban living. I next outline the mobile social network case study, Dodgeball,
and discuss the data collection and analysis procedures. Then I introduce the concept of
parochialization as a means of capturing the sense of commonality that emerges among
participating co-inhabitants of the social space. I explain how Dodgeball informants
used the service to socially coordinate and congregate with others in urban public
spaces. I conclude by arguing that spatial factors are very relevant in mediated com-
munication and suggest how this research might be extended to other social media.

Urban public space and social interaction

Public space plays an important role in urban environments and can be a refuge from the
hustle and bustle of city life. When I use the term public space, I am referring to non-
domestic physical sites that are distinguished by their relative accessibility such as dance
clubs, parks, restaurants, bars, cafes, the street, etc. (Lofland, 1998; McCarthy, 2001).
While some would delimit public spaces to non-commercial physical sites of congrega-
tion like parks or plazas (Carr et al., 1992), I am including more semi-public sites of
consumption like cafes and bars because these semi-public spaces often serve the same
social function as a site of sociality and recreation. As Zukin (1995) argues, there is an
increasing commodification of public spaces in urban centers; thus using a broader defi-
nition of public space, which includes semi-public sites of consumption, more accurately
reflecting the everyday practice of urban life away from home and work.
Public spaces also serve as an important site of social interaction. According to Carr
et al. (1992: 45): ‘Public places afford casual encounters in the course of daily life that
can bind people together and give their lives meaning and power.’ Public spaces allow
people to gather and socialize away from home and work. Oldenburg (1991) calls some
of these sites of social congregation, ‘third places’. These are places where people can
Humphreys 765

gather for casual but important sociality without excessive social or personal obligations.
This kind of public interaction can alleviate stresses from work by offering relaxing and
entertaining social contact (Carr et al., 1992; Oldenburg, 1991).
Cities are typically characterized by diversity along nearly almost every social axis:
race, class, religion, sexuality, education, political ideology and even temperament. Thus
sociality in urban public spaces can occur between people of very different backgrounds.
However, there can be social inhibitors to striking up conversations in public (Goffman,
1963, 1971). People with commonalities are easier to engage with than are people with
whom one has nothing in common (Carr et al., 1992).
Mobile social networks seek to alleviate some of the challenges of interacting with
others in public. These services use mobile technology to facilitate the exchange of social
or locational information among users to encourage face-to-face interaction. One mobile
social network, Dodgeball, was specifically designed to facilitate sociality in public
spaces. This article examines the spatial practices associated with this service. Spatial
practices refer to the everyday lived experience of and movement through social and
physical space (Certeau, 1984). By investigating the common practices associated with
mobile social network use, one can begin to understand the meanings and perceived
effects of the technology’s adoption and identify social implications for users.
Researchers have begun writing about the specific role of mobile and ubiquitous tech-
nology in the city. Townsend (2000) suggests that mobile technology changes the urban
metabolism by accelerating the exchange of information to the point that it can bring
about a ‘real-time’ city. This study aims to ground discussions of the ‘city of the future’
in the everyday experiences of Dodgeball users and as such explore the lived complexity
of using mobile social networks in the city.

Case study: Dodgeball

Dodgeball was a service, owned by Google and based in New York City, that allowed
users to let personal networks of friends know when they were at their local bars and
restaurants via their mobile phones. This service required its members to join a social
network system and was free to use. Members set up a Dodgeball social network by
inviting people to be their friends and then they could also see their friends’ friends, simi-
lar to Facebook and MySpace (boyd and Ellison, 2007). Rather than separately calling or
text messaging each individual in one’s Dodgeball network, users sent one text message
(called a ‘check-in’ message) to Dodgeball, which then broadcasted the message to their
friend networks alerting them where they were and that they were interested in meeting
up. For example, a friend might receive a message saying, ‘Your friend, Lee, is at the
Irish Pub (19th & Walnut St). Why not stop by and say hello or check in to let her know
where you are.’ Dodgeball was primarily used to facilitate meeting up with one’s social
network of friends in local public spaces.
Dodgeball also integrated Google Maps into their service so that users could see
a map of their check-in locations as well as their friends’ check-ins. Using the maps,
users could get a visual representation of their social outings. These maps were available
primarily on the Dodgeball website, but they could also be accessed if the Dodgeball
member had a smart phone with mobile internet capabilities.
766 new media & society 12(5)

Within the first year of existence, Dodgeball registered about 15,000 users (Terdiman,
2005). This was the last reported number of users because Google acquired the company
in mid-2005. While the number of users grew substantially as social media and mobile
technology proliferated over the next few years, Google has not released any user data to
the public.
Dodgeball was officially shut down in January 2009, but Google launched Google
Latitude which allows users to ‘see where your friends are right now’ on a Google Map.1
Like Dodgeball, Google Latitude offers users the ability to share their locations with
friends via their mobile phones or their computers. Google Latitude is more technologi-
cally advanced than was Dodgeball. As a mobile service, Dodgeball relied on text mes-
saging to send location information to and from users. Google Latitude depends on
mobile smart phone technology so that users will only see a Google Map of their friends’
locations via their phone rather than receiving text messages with their friends’ locations.
The location-sharing function of Dodgeball and Google Latitude is fundamental to each
service and very similar.

Data collection and analysis

Becker (1998) and Lofland et al. (2006) recommend the use of naturalistic and open-
ended methods to study social interactions because it allows people to use their own
language to describe the social practices embedded in their everyday lives. In this vein, I
conducted qualitative fieldwork of Dodgeball as a mobile social network. Dodgeball was
originally chosen as a case study because it was one of the earliest mobile social net-
works available in the USA (Terdiman, 2005). The investment by Google had also sug-
gested a long-term viability of the service (Benner, 2005). Dodgeball was also only
available in major cities within the US and thus became a useful lens through which to
explore the relationship between urban spatial practices and mobile social networks.
The data collection began in November 2005 and concluded in November 2006.
Twenty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with Dodgeball users from seven cities
throughout the USA. Because the Dodgeball system does not allow users to easily send
messages to people who are not ‘Dodgeball friends’, I initiated contact with Dodgeball’s
founder, Dennis Crowley, to ask if he would help recruit participants. Crowley sent
recruitment emails to top users in several cities. In addition, I used snowball sampling
based upon those interviews. In total, I interviewed 13 users through an introduction
from Crowley and eight users with a snowball sample from the original 13. These partici-
pants were among the more active Dodgeball users in the USA and thus are not necessar-
ily representative of all Dodgeball users. In addition to interviews, I analyzed messages
sent among a group of Dodgeball users during a week-long period in October 2006 in
order to explore trends in timing, language and proximity. I also interviewed Crowley to
understand the background and context of Dodgeball as a mobile social network.
I interviewed nine women and 12 men, ranging in age from 23 to 30. Geographically,
they lived in Chicago (n = 1), Los Angeles (n = 2), Minneapolis (n = 4), New York City
(n = 9), Philadelphia (n = 3), San Francisco (n = 1) and Seattle (n = 1). I conducted fieldwork
in Philadelphia, New York City and Minneapolis and therefore was able to interview more
Humphreys 767

users in these cities. Other interviews were conducted over the phone. I recorded all of the
interviews and transcribed them myself in order to ensure the accuracy of the content.
My observational fieldwork in New York City and Minneapolis involved meeting up
with study participants in the evening and observing how they used Dodgeball to coordi-
nate meeting up with others in semi-public spaces like bars and lounges. In total, I
observed six Dodgeball users in New York City and three users in Minneapolis. I also
conducted participant observation where I was an active member of Dodgeball in
Philadelphia for about a year. I invited friends to use Dodgeball and used the service to
coordinate some of my own socializing in the city throughout the year. My participant
observation was primarily a means of becoming more familiar with the various techno-
logical aspects of the service.
Throughout the project I drew on grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Rather
than linearly collecting data and then subsequently analyzing it after data collection is
completed, I used a constant comparative method to iteratively collect and analyze field
notes and interview transcripts to identify themes and categories throughout the process.
The initial themes that emerged included concepts related to space such as public, paro-
chial, private and neighborhood. Once these initial themes were identified, I used QSR’s
N6 to help organize and systematize the coding of the transcripts and field notes. I con-
tinued collecting and analyzing data until I reached theoretical saturation, when all newly
collected data could be understood and accounted for through the categorization and
theoretical framework established from previous data collection and analyses (Glaser
and Strauss, 1967).
Maxwell (1996) suggests that member checks can be an important tool to help mini-
mize threats to validity in qualitative research. Therefore I sent different parts of the
analysis and write-up to the founder of Dodgeball and four other participants in order to
solicit feedback on the interpretations and conclusions I had drawn. None of the member
checks led to any suggested changes in the findings.
A final note about my data collection concerns the multiple points of communica-
tion, interaction and observation of users. The communication exchanges I had with
informants about the mobile social networks were both direct and indirect. I was able to
directly gather data about these systems through observing user behavior (e.g. what
people put in their profiles or where I observed them using the services). Most of the
data about usage, however, were collected indirectly through people’s formal self-
reports during interviews. While I have little reason to believe participants lied to me
about their usage, I cannot necessarily verify their responses. Keenly aware that they
were being interviewed, some participants may have performed a particular role of
‘mobile social networker’. This performance, however, is just as important to under-
standing cultural norms. Even performances convey expectations, attitudes and beliefs
about how mobile social networks are supposed to work.2
Glaser and Strauss (1967: 68) recommend collecting various ‘slices of data’ in order
to strengthen the conclusions. My slices of data included in-depth and informal inter-
views with both users and the founder of Dodgeball, field observations, participant obser-
vations, analyses of a sample of Dodgeball text messages and an analysis of industry
press about Dodgeball. Taken together, these various data sources can triangulate the
768 new media & society 12(5)

findings, reduce threats to validity (Maxwell, 1996) and provide a richer, fuller picture of
the spatial practices associated with Dodgeball as a mobile social network.

Parochialization
When beginning to explore the kinds of interactions that occur around the use of mobile
social networks, it is helpful to contextualize them within categories of urban social
spaces more broadly. Lofland (1998) identifies three kinds of urban social space: pub-
lic, parochial and private. Public spaces are territories characterized by strangers, while
private spaces are territories characterized by intimates and personal networks. Lofland
suggests a third kind of urban space exists which is somewhere between the public and
private spaces, namely, the parochial. Parochial spaces are territories characterized by
‘a sense of commonality among acquaintances and neighbors who are involved in inter-
personal networks that are located within communities’ (Lofland, 1998: 10). Neighbor­
hoods are examples of parochial spaces. There is nothing inherent in the features of
physical space to make it parochial or public. Lofland uses the term realm rather than
space to describe how such characteristics are socially defined. In addition, parochial
realms can be highly contextual. One person’s parochial realm may be another’s public
realm. For example, sometimes people can sense when they have entered a parochial
realm where those around them seem to know each other but the newcomer is clearly
not part of the community.

Mobile social networks and the parochialization of space

Mobile social networks can help to turn public realms into parochial realms through
parochialization. Parochialization can be defined as the process of creating, sharing and
exchanging information, social and locational, to contribute to a sense of commonality
among a group of people in public space. Sharing information through mobile social
networks can help to contribute to a sense of familiarity among users in urban public
spaces.

Creating familiarity  Dodgeball members shared information about themselves when

they sent check-in messages about where they were in the city. Dodgeball distributed
information about and within networks of people in highly dense urban centers that can
offer hundreds of public venues within a mile radius. The chances of running into friends
in a neighborhood venue is not likely when there are 10 venues within a three block area,
a scenario typical of the Lower East Side in New York City. People used Dodgeball to
broadcast and receive information about themselves and friends, which can parochialize
the public realms which they inhabit. By knowing where people in one’s Dodgeball net-
work were, users could know the social relations they would have if they went to the
venue from which their friends had checked-in:

[Dodgeball] is a very passive way to kind of find out where your friends are. I mean, you can
sort of sit back and have a sense of where people are at. . . . It’s also helpful walking into a place
and just having a sense of who’s around. (Taylor, New York City)3
Humphreys 769

Taylor used Dodgeball to find out where his friends were so that when he arrived at a
place, he was already familiar with which Dodgeball friends would be there. Taylor, like
other Dodgeball informants, used the service to survey the local social scene before join-
ing it. By exchanging sociolocational information via Dodgeball, a former public realm
could be transformed into a parochial realm where one had a sense of familiarity with
those inhabiting the space.
Abby, another participant from New York City, suggested Dodgeball was particularly
useful when she had a friend visiting from out of town. Using Dodgeball, she could
choose a place to take her where she would know people. Abby mentioned that this not
only made her seem very popular (especially if her out-of-town friend was not a
Dodgeball user), but also ensured there were many new people for her friend to meet.
Dodgeball helped Abby to have a sense of familiarity with Dodgeball members in vari-
ous places in the city before leaving her apartment.
Parochialization involves sharing information so that people have a sense of com-
monality with others in public space. By sharing their locations through Dodgeball,
groups of friends could coordinate congregation. Coordinating a group to meet up in a
city is generally more complex than coordinating just two individuals. Dodgeball facili-
tated this process by broadcasting location information among networks of friends and
friends of friends. Members could use Dodgeball check-ins to create a social map of
where their friends were in the city. As people exchanged messages through Dodgeball,
users began to piece together the social landscape around them. When Dodgeball mem-
bers congregated in public spaces, they could experience such places as parochial realms
instead of public realms because of their familiar social relations therein.

Parochialization and spatial practice

One way that Dodgeball informants were able to coordinate congregation is through a
process of redirection. Redirection relates to people’s ability to act on information
obtained through their mobile phone to change trips already in progress (Ling and Yttri,
2002). Mobile technologies allow for synchronous mediated communication while in
transit, something that was not easily accomplished previously. Groups of friends could
use Dodgeball to act on this communication immediately and alter their planned route
as a result. Two informants suggested that redirection seemed to work better in New
York City than in Los Angeles or Minneapolis. Dodgeball founder, Dennis Crowley,
explains why:

Everyone walks [in New York City], so the paths we take are so fluid. It doesn’t matter if I go
up this block and over this block. Or two blocks over and then up this way. So it’s kind of like
we can change the way they experience a city, if only in a small way. So it’s like I usually take
this path, but I take this path instead. So I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the experience
where it’s an average Tuesday and I get out of the subway and my phone starts to get some
signal and I’m walking home and someone is a block north so I walk that way instead of
walking this way. You know, little things like that. But if it’s helping me meet up with people I
normally wouldn’t meet, then like if I’m just going home and looking for something else to do,
then it works really good for those times. (Dennis Crowley, New York City)
770 new media & society 12(5)

Crowley suggests that though people may have routinized paths through the city, these
paths are fluid and may change depending on social and locational information available
through Dodgeball. Redirection is part of the spatial practice of mobile social network
use in the city.
Three general factors contributed to whether members used Dodgeball messages to
coordinate congregation in public spaces around the city: timing, spatial proximity and
travel time. Sometimes the timing of receiving a check-in message was not conducive to
redirection. For example, a group of people may just have arrived at a bar, ordered a
drink and were ready to stay when they received someone else’s check-in. Another com-
mon timing hurdle was that informants would receive a message just when they arrived
home in the evening. Several of my informants mentioned that once they get home for
the day they were not as likely to meet up with friends as they would be if they had
received the check-in message while still at work. Distance from the person who sent the
check-in message also inhibited redirection. This was especially true for the Dodgeball
participants I spoke with in geographically dispersed cities like Los Angeles and the San
Francisco Bay Area.
In some instances, it was not necessarily distance but traveling time that deterred
someone from redirecting their route. For example, one informant, Nick, lives in
Brooklyn Heights, while several of his friends live in Williamsburg (another neigh-
borhood in Brooklyn). It’s not easy to get from Brooklyn Heights to Williamsburg
by subway:

I have a couple close friends in different parts of Brooklyn, but again, if someone lives in
Williamsburg, they may as well live in Jersey for all I care. I’m not goin’ there. (Nick,
New York City)

Because of the public transportation system, it would be easier for Nick to meet up with
people in parts of Manhattan than in parts of Brooklyn. Thus distance and ease of travel
together contributed to whether or not members redirected their route as a result of
using Dodgeball.
When the timing, distance and traveling time all work out, however, informants
indicated they did use Dodgeball to redirect their route to congregate with others. For
example, Livingston described a night where those factors contributing to congregation
came together:

I think the most vivid time I remember using Dodgeball was, I had gotten into a fight with my
girlfriend and I was real pissed off. You know, I was on the verge of breaking up, and I was just
like, you know, I didn’t want to go home to my apartment. It was a dark, dreary place. And I
was literally almost on the subway, and I got a Dodgeball, and it was Sima. And I found out he
was right around the corner, and I think this was like one of the few times I actually hung out
with Sima on his own and became really good friends at the time, you know, which was all
because how that actually completely changed my night. Where I could have just gone home
and done nothing, I went out and I then I ended up, you know, meeting more of Sima’s friends
and became really good friends. (Livingston, New York City)
Humphreys 771

For Livingston, neither the timing, distance, nor travel time was a hurdle for him to meet
up with Sima. In some circumstances, one of these factors may be a hurdle, but the social
context was such that redirection and congregation were worthwhile. For example, Leonard
describes a night when he was already home, but decided to meet up with friends at a club:

When I started using Dodgeball, I met this girl, just a friend, and she checked in really near my
apartment. And I sent her a text message, saying, ‘Oh my goodness, I live two blocks from there.’
And she said, ‘Well, come out and dance!’ And so I ended up meeting up with this girl and her
friends at this bar that happened to be a few blocks from my apartment. And since then I’ve
gotten to know a lot of the other people. I don’t hang out a lot with that girl that much anymore.
But I’ve sort of met all her friends and become friends with them. (Leonard, Los Angeles)

Even though Leonard was already home, the social context coupled with the proximity
of the check-in contributed to his redirection. The point that Leonard made about meet-
ing the other women that night is also part of parochializing the public.
When informants used Dodgeball, they could also meet friends of friends. Though the
system itself purports to offer friend-of-a-friend text notification, it usually would not
work or people would turn it off. Nevertheless, informants described meeting friends of
friends once they got to a bar. This did not occur because the Dodgeball system told them
about a new person, but because their friend merely introduced them. People used
Dodgeball to facilitate meeting up and would then continue to share information face-to-
face so as to become more familiar with the people around them. For example, Nick
discusses how Dodgeball indirectly facilitated social connectivity:

It’s hard to say whether I’ve met them through Dodgeball cuz that sort of implies that I met
them on the site or they showed up as friends-of-friends and I started talking to them. . . .
Because of the ‘Dodgeball Effect’, I have ended up with groups of people who have brought
their friends and I meet them too. So in a way, yes, I’ve met them through it because Dodgeball
creates that atmosphere where people can serendipitously meet up with whom they’re with.
(Nick, New York City)

Nick met people indirectly through Dodgeball by meeting up with another Dodgeball
member who had brought other friends with him or her. While Nick may not have
become close friends with these new people, he gained a greater sense of who was around
him through these casual introductions and serendipitous meetings. In both indirect and
direct ways, Dodgeball informants exchanged social and locational information to
encourage a familiarity and parochialize public realms. This kind of casual meeting also
suggests a potential bridging social capital function of Dodgeball similar to that found on
social network sites (Ellison et al., 2007).

Neighborhood  Neighborhoods are important parochial realms within cities. There

were several ways that neighborhoods were relevant to Dodgeball informants. First,
rather than checking in from a specific venue in the city, 15 of the 21 Dodgeball infor-
mants also checked in from neighborhoods more generally. Sometimes these users sent
772 new media & society 12(5)

a message about going out in a particular neighborhood in order to let people know ahead
of time where they would be going out that evening:

Another way I use [Dodgeball], is to say, ‘Hey tonight a bunch of us will be in Belltown or in
Capital Hill.’ Sort of checking into neighborhoods instead of venues, ‘We’re gonna be in this
area.’ Just to prime people. To be like, ‘If you want to hang with us tonight, make your way in this
general direction’, and then from there we can use Dodgeball to actually meet up. (Kirk, Seattle)

Kirk sometimes used Dodgeball to let people know ahead of time where he would be
later that night to make it easier to meet up.
Rather than explicitly messaging about neighborhoods, sometimes a user actually
checked in from a particular location with the purpose of letting friends know that he or
she was in the neighborhood but not to meet up at his or her current location. For example,
Livingston describes a conversation he had with a friend who did not understand why he
would check in from a store rather than someplace where they could actually socialize:

I had checked in at the Apple Store, and he goes, ‘Why are you checking in at the Apple Store?
Like I care you’re in the Apple Store!’ I go, ‘Well the idea was that I was checking into
something that was near, so in case anyone else in that area, we could hang out or meet up or
something like that.’ (Livingston, New York City)

Livingston sometimes would check in from a place not because he wanted to meet up
with others there, but because he wanted to see if he had any friends in the neighborhood.
In this way, he used Dodgeball to see if this area of the city might become a parochial
realm in which he would have a sense of social familiarity with other co-located
Dodgeball users.
Another way that notions of neighborhood were reinforced when using Dodgeball
was when members were in their friends’ neighborhoods. Several Dodgeball informants
mentioned that sometimes they would check into a particular neighborhood because they
knew their friends’ lived there:

Sometimes, I’ll purposefully check in from a certain neighborhood when I’m there and I’ll
know that I’ll see that person cuz they live right there. (Deirdre, Minneapolis)

I’m definitely aware when I’m nearby people. You know like, when you walk by someone’s
apartment, and you’re like, ‘God, I feel like I should buzz or call them.’ But in NY, we don’t.
We don’t just stop by. This is like our sort of our way of stopping by. Like if I just need to like
sit down somewhere, I sit down and have a coffee or something. I’ll check in if I’m near
someone’s apartment to see if they’re there. (Nick, New York City)

Nick’s comment explicitly identifies the social norms of city life for his friends. Generally
speaking, even if one is in a friend’s neighborhood, one would not stop by their apart-
ment. But with Dodgeball, users could nonchalantly alert friends that they were near
their home without the social awkwardness of stopping by. Even though Nick was in his
friend’s parochial realm, by meeting up with his friend he could harness the familiarity
Humphreys 773

of the neighborhood for his own socialization. Rather than intruding into a friend’s pri-
vate realm, members could used Dodgeball to alert a friend they were in his or her neigh-
borhood or parochial realm.

Traveling  People also used Dodgeball to parochialize the public space when traveling
with a group of people. For example, several New York participants mentioned using
Dodgeball at South by Southwest, an annual music/film/hi-tech festival in Austin, Texas.
A large group of colleagues and friends were at the festival and used Dodgeball to ensure
meeting up with familiar people in an unfamiliar city:

I was at South by Southwest actually. It was, like, the densest Dodgeball activity ever. I’d check
in to a place and there’d be like 40 Dodgeball users there. (Enid, New York City)

I did use [Dodgeball] a little in Austin when I was there for South by Southwest. But then again
the people who were down there were all my friends from New York or they were tech people,
even though I wasn’t there for the tech. So people were using it, but it was people I knew from
New York City. (Elicia, New York City)

Even though some of these informants had never been to Austin before, because they
used Dodgeball, they had a sense of who and what was around them. Lofland (1998)
argues that one’s experience of a space is based upon one’s social relations within it.
Because there were so many Dodgeballers in Austin for the festival, these informants
experienced some of the Austin bars as familiar.
The use of Dodgeball contributed to a sense of social familiarity in unfamiliar loca-
tions by allowing groups of friends to coordinate congregation while traveling. Despite
not knowing the venues or city as well as they knew their home city, an unfamiliar place
could become a parochial realm by sharing locational and social information through
Dodgeball. Users may never have been to a specific bar before, but because they had
coordinated with friends to meet using Dodgeball, there was a sense of familiarity upon
entering based on the social relations characterizing the realm.

Parochialization without congregation

Social interaction and coordination among groups of friends can sometimes be a com-
plex social dance. Not all of the information exchanged through Dodgeball facilitated
congregation of people in public space; in fact, sometimes it facilitated the avoidance of
people in public space. By sharing information through Dodgeball, members could
become familiar with where people in their network were. As Kirk describes below,
sometimes people used this information to coordinate congregation and other times peo-
ple used this information to actively avoid congregation:

Kirk (Seattle): You may be the kind of person that wants to know where [your Dodgeball
friends] are because you want to join them or because you want to not join
them. You know so often it’s interesting that the ambiguity of it allows
you to use it in a couple different ways.
774 new media & society 12(5)

Interviewer: Like if you know someone’s out at a particular bar, you’ll avoid that
place?
Kirk: Yeah. I mean, it sounds a little mean but it’s a small city. I don’t really use
it that way, but there’s a couple people I know that do use it that way. And
even if you’re not direct friends, it can be used like if you’re out with
somebody that knows somebody, they can let you know, ‘Oh yeah, your
ex-boyfriend is over at Twist so we shouldn’t go there.’

Social interaction is a complex negotiation. The same information exchanged through

Dodgeball could be used to facilitate meeting up as much as it could be used to avoid a
particular person.
Sometimes Dodgeball informants were not avoiding a particular person, but still
using Dodgeball to eliminate potential places to socialize. For example, Enid suggests
that sometimes she used Dodgeball to avoid a particular social scene:

Sometimes you get a text message that everybody’s someplace and maybe you’re getting
tired and don’t have enough energy to deal with it. So you’re like, ‘Maybe we’ll go
somewhere else.’ Like it’s too much and you just want to be in a mellow place. (Enid, New
York City)

When Enid was tired, she wanted a place to relax with a friend rather than going to a
loud bar. Using Dodgeball, she could tell ahead of time what the scene at a particular
venue may be like based upon the check-in messages that she received. In this case,
being familiar with the social scene at a particular place led to avoidance rather than
congregation. As these examples indicate, the spatial practice associated with Dodgeball
use was highly contextualized and dynamic. Based on the situation, the familiarity with
various urban spaces could lead to very different social decisions and movement
through the city.

Discussion
Sheller (2004) argues that there is great value in exploring the complexity and messiness
of the interconnections between physical space, mobile communication and people.
Therefore despite examining the use of a mobile social network, I have tried to maneuver
around understanding Dodgeball as network per se. By focusing on the everyday spatial
practices of Dodgeball members, I have tried to show how the same technology can be
used to both facilitate and avoid sociality in urban public spaces. While some have sug-
gested that mobile communication technologies contribute to blurring the boundaries
between public and private (Hoflich, 2006; Puro, 2002; Sheller, 2004; Sheller and Urry,
2003), Lofland’s (1998) concept of ‘parochial’ becomes an alternative lens through
which to understand the complexity of privacy and publicness as it relates to urban com-
munication and spatial practices.
One of the goals of this project was to explore the role of spatial practice in mobile
social networks and in doing so introduce a discussion of space into social network site
Humphreys 775

research as well as into computer-mediated communication research. Despite a 25-year

history of computer-mediated communication research, the role of physical and social
spatial practice has been relatively neglected in the field.4 Much of the excitement about
computer-mediated communication was with its ability to overcome time and space
(Castells, 2000; Poster, 1990; Wellman et al., 2003); however, temporal and spatial issues
certainly still influence communication and interaction. New communication technolo-
gies may have changed the spatial and temporal boundaries, but mediated communica-
tion is still shaped by locational and sociospatial factors. Wilken (2008: 47) argues for
the need to examine ‘the way that mobile media influence and shape places and place
experience, and the way that mobile phone use is integrated into the flows of everyday
life’. This study was an attempt to begin to answer such questions.
In this article, I have suggested that Dodgeball allows for the exchange of social and
locational information to encourage a shift from public to parochial realms by facilitating
familiarity and commonality among members in public space. Since realms are socially
defined, there is nothing inherent in the physical (or virtual) spaces that makes them
public or parochial. Dodgeball informants exchanged information so that they could tri-
angulate social maps of their friend networks, whereupon they would know some of the
social relations within a particular urban place before they arrived. The process of paro-
chialization could be used in alternative ways as well. Information exchanged through
Dodgeball was used to avoid particular locations or people. The complexity of social
interaction and spatial practice is highlighted through the study of the everyday use of
mobile social networks.
The parochialization of public realms through mobile social networks is an important
development because, as Lofland (1998) suggests, many technologies have contributed
to a ‘privatism’ of urban space. Technological developments such as phones, sewage,
water and heating systems, improved mail delivery, vehicles, etc., have ‘made the with-
drawal from participation in the public realm a genuine option’ (Lofland, 1998: 144).
Mobile social networks like Dodgeball can encourage a participation in the public realm
by relying on and simultaneously showcasing the aesthetic pleasures of the public realm
including public sociality, unexpectedness and crowding (Lofland, 1998). Mobile social
networks are not fundamentally changing who is interacting with whom in public
spaces, but the process of parochialization suggests subtle and important changes in the
ways that mobile social network users may be experiencing and engaging in and with
urban space.
Perhaps then one of the roles of mobile social media is to make the urban environment
seems less cold and anonymous. Rather than mobile social networks helping people to
find the love of their lives or their new best friend, a more plausible and realistic role for
this technology may be just to make the public social life of the city more familiar. That
said, it is important to note that the use of mobile social media is only among a relatively
small group of elite early adopters. Mobile social networks will not entirely change the
urban environment for all people. But for those who do use it, they may experience the
city in new ways.
The role of Dodgeball and other mobile social networks in facilitating social connec-
tivity, however, raises important questions about the potential social insularity that may
776 new media & society 12(5)

also arise from using these systems. Both Thom-Santelli (2007) and Crawford (2008)
warn that mobile social software can lead to homophilous tendencies rather than extend-
ing and bridging social circles. Parochialization occurred among groups of Dodgeball
users, not among all inhabitants of the particular public spaces. While I found that
Dodgeball informants did meet new people when using the service, the kinds of people
they met were friends of friends and tended to be similar to themselves in terms of demo-
graphics such as age and education. Dodgeball has been found to encourage social
molecularization (Humphreys, 2007), whereby users move about the city in collective
groups. Future research should empirically examine whether this insularity is endemic to
Dodgeball, mobile social networks, or social media more broadly.
This study suggests several other research trajectories. Since this study began, other
mobile social networks such as Loopt and Google Latitude have emerged and it would
be important to examine if parochialization occurs on these other networks. In light of
the continued growth of social network sites (boyd and Ellison, 2007), future research
might also examine if parochialization extends to the mobile applications of these sites
and explore whether these services encourage the exchange of information to provide a
sense of familiarity for users in urban spaces.
The concept of social realms (Lofland, 1998) may be extended to examine social
media more broadly. Rather than understanding public and parochial realms as physical
territories in cities that are characterized by their social relations, one might broaden
realms to include online spaces. Thus, much like third places (Oldenburg, 1991) have
been extended to online games (Steinkuehler and Williams, 2006), one might argue that
the allure of some online spaces may be understood through the concept of parochial
realms. For example, perhaps Facebook can be understood as a parochial realm, that is,
a site of familiarity and comfort because of the social relations found therein. Future
research should continue to explore how socio-spatial metaphors can extend understand-
ings of new media.

Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the Annenberg School for Communication and the Urban Communication
Foundation for funding this study. She is also grateful to Cornell’s New Media and Society Group
and the reviewers for their feedback and helpful suggestions.

Notes
1 URL (consulted 27 March 2009): http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html
2 A comparison of the text messages collected with the self-reported usage from the same study
participants conveyed similar usage patterns, indicating that at least these users did not misrep-
resent their Dodgeball usage in the interviews.
3 All names, excluding Dennis Crowley’s, have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the
study participants.
4 A noted exception to this is the discussion of cyberspace as a spatial concept (e.g. Barbatsis
et al., 1999; Mitra and Schwartz, 2001); however, these discussions are not grounded in the
spatial practice of everyday users.
Humphreys 777

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Lee Humphreys is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell

University. She received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores the social uses and perceived effects
of communication technology in everyday life.